


No Serpent Stands Alone

by jaekakes



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alice realizes she can't shake being a serpent, F/M, FP gets Alice out of the house, FP protects his girl, Hal can choke, Hal is an abuser, ignores the fuckery that is the finale, no serpent stands alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekakes/pseuds/jaekakes
Summary: In the aftermath of Jughead's assault and Hal's arrest, one thing becomes apparent - no serpent stands alone.Alice begins to realize the truth: in unity there is strength.





	No Serpent Stands Alone

When she sleeps with him for the second time in the years north of seventeen, her legs are an unshaven mess matching the dark roots that belie the truth of her hair actually being a few shades darker than the stepford blond she’d committed to for the twenty-five years previous. She had only braved the media firestorm outside her front door once since her husband had gotten arrested, sent off to federal prison and declared criminally insane, and that had been for him. She had braved hell for one night only and that was to make sure that his son and her daughter were going to be fine and that he didn’t do anything stupid and get himself killed. She had found him when the Serpents had beat their hasty retreat from the Southside after falling to the Ghoulies. He had been so caught up in his own mess that he didn’t notice she hadn’t managed much more than taking his hand and whispering the words that she had shouted at fourteen, “No serpent stands alone.”  
  
So, she hadn’t left the house for her bi-monthly upkeep appointment at the salon and, when Betty managed to shove her in the shower every few days, she barely had the energy for washing her hair let alone shaving her legs. It wasn’t like she had expected FP Jones to show up at her front door on the night Jughead got released from the hospital but Betty is with the boy and she should have known he’d turn up eventually.  
  
“No serpent stands alone,” he breathed into her ear when she flung her arms around his neck and dampened the collar of his flannel shirt with her tears. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come sooner, Ali. I’m so damn sorry.”  
  
And she knows that he so damn sorry for so much more than not making a social call sooner but, then again, so is she. So she lets him apologize a thousand times against the shell of her ear while they stand in her doorway giving the media outlets behind them the fodder they need for the morning’s front page - “Black Hood Killer’s Wife Moves On Days Later”. Except she’s not. They aren’t. He just… He knows her better than anyone ever has. He’s known everything about her since the day her daddy took her to the Wyrm when she was three years old and her mother was off taking care of her sick aunt in Indiana. She had been stuck in the corner by the jukebox playing with Senior’s son.  
  
Finally, finally, she maneuvers them away from the front door and closes it. It is then that he notes the bruises along her neck that have gone from bright red to a deep and dark purple. His calloused fingers trail over them and she sees his words in his eyes before he opens his mouth to speak them. “He’s in federal prison, FP. You can’t kill him.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean I won’t go watch them fry his ass and tip the executioner for his troubles,” he countered. FP leaned forward and brushed his lips gently against the bruises, such a soft counterpoint to his harsh words. “No one will ever touch you like that again, Alice. Not while I’m breathing.”  
  
“I know,” Alice tells him as her fingers trail through his slick dark hair. “I know,” she echoes herself. She knows his words are a promise - he would die to save her, with no hesitation, and she knows that he knows without her having to form the words that, while Hal had never tried to kill her before, it was not the first time in twenty-five years that bruises had been left on her skin. She knows that he knows it had been twenty-five years of veiled threats and snark accompanied by sweater sets to protect her girls from the truth. Hal may have not always been the Black Hood but he had always been a monster, one that Ali Smith had been swept away by when she was young and stupid.  
  
“I love you,” he tells her. It’s not some big, grand romantic gesture. It’s not what she thought it would be like to hear him say those three words to her again after so, so, so long. No, it doesn’t sweep her off her feet but it breaks something dark inside her. It’s just fact. FP Jones had loved her for forty years, since his pop had sent him to play with Mr. Smith’s girl while they talked business. “You don’t have to say it back.”  
  
And she won’t. Not yet. The last twenty-five years meant something to her and she has to reconcile that time with the clusterfuck her marriage became. She hates Hal Cooper. When the media finally vacates her yard, she’ll go to the courthouse and take back her maiden name with no hesitation because it won’t be long before Betty is a Jones and Polly took Blossom for the ease of having the same last name as the twins. There’s no reason for her to keep it. Not even her career because Hal had certainly set fire to that with his murderous spree. She hates Hal Cooper, no longer wants to be a Cooper, but she was a Cooper for more than half of her life and she can’t flush it down the drain and fall into FP’s arm without the slightest bit of hesitation.  
  
She can’t say the words that have set on the precipice of her tongue for weeks now, since the day she turned up at his trailer and fell into his bed like she could pretend it was 1990 again. Not yet. She’ll get there. And he’ll wait. She knows that he will.  
  
“Ali,” he breathes. She’s been silent for too long and the old nickname, the one only FP Jones and Freddie Andrews had been allowed to use, hangs like a question in the air.  
“Kiss me,” she requested and he acquiesced.  
  
His hands fell to her too small waist, depression had rapidly been doing a number on her, and he knew it’d take more than his love and devotion to pull her back but maybe he could give her hope. She took a half-step forward and leaned up to meet him as his mouth slanted over hers and she quickly found herself with her legs wrapped around his waist, articles of clothing being lost at a rapid pace. When they make it to the guest bed in the spare room, she had directed him in the opposite direction of her marital bed and toward the room she’d been inhabiting for the last nine nights, he lays her on the bed and divests her of the last few garments.  
  
FP says nothing of the leg hair when he falls to his knees at the crux of her thighs in adoration; he just trails his fingers over her fuzzy calves and latches his mouth to the serpent tattoo that winds around her hip bone.  
  
I love you. I love you. I love you. She chants the words over and over again in her mind but all that comes out her mouth is “FP god” and every variation thereof before she drags him up her body and flips them over, losing herself in that dance they’d done for the first time so very long ago.  
  
Betty seems unsurprised but confused to see them walk into the trailer the following morning with arms full of grocery bags laiden with food. FP greets her with a smile as he explains to his son that he’s in for a treat because Ali’s biscuits and gravy are the best in three counties - not even Pop Tate can compare. Betty merely raises an eye at the nickname and relieves Alice of her bags while noting her mother was donning an old serpent jacket, the one she’d spotted on an older version of herself in a picture on one of her trips to the Wyrm. Alice says nothing but kisses her cheek as she steps past to clap Jughead on his uninjured shoulder and drop a motherly kiss to his beanie clad forehead.  
  
The boy glances up with that familiar grin and she knows why her daughter fell in love, it’s the same reason she’d fallen in love with the boy’s father so long ago.  
  
Betty, unable to remain quiet any longer, simply asks, “Mom? You left the house?”  
  
Alice glances down at the boy beneath her fingertips, over at his father placing perishables in the fridge, and back at her daughter who, she knows in her bones, will have her own leather jacket before too long. “No serpent stands alone.”


End file.
